State Comptroller Matanyahu Engelman, CPA, published a severe report on the field of veterinary supervision of the sale of meat products in local authorities in Israel, from which many failures emerge that may endanger meat consumers in Israel.
Exposing an Illegal Meat Factory (Archive) | Ministry of Agriculture
Engelman emphasizes that this is a highly sensitive sales product, and therefore supervision of it is of great importance lest unsuitable meat reach the markets and endanger those who buy it. The severe report notes, for example, that in Israel no information was given on the results of audits conducted, and there is no ranking of places according to the results of the tests. It also turned out that in 2021, 5,919 audits were carried out, despite the fact that there are about 70,000 sites in Israel.
An illegal farm located in the Sharon area, photo: Ministry of Agriculture
The comptroller also notes that the Ministry of Health has not issued guidelines detailing the types of sites to be monitored. This need is especially necessary in light of cases of morbidity that occurred in various institutions, where in one case 33 residents fell ill, and three of them died. The comptroller also notes that in 2021, only 3,136 meat transports out of 612,341 were inspected.
The comptroller also examined the actual situation in a sample of various municipalities and found, for example, that in Taibeh, Kiryat Malachi and Zichron Yaakov there was no list or mapping of the sites to be monitored. In addition, veterinarians do not receive information from the Ministry of Health about a new meat business, so that they will know how to supervise it.
Calmly working at the Ministry of Agriculture,
Dreamed under the supervision of veterinarians
Also, as of June 2022, 39 authorities did not employ a veterinarian and 45 authorities employed an unqualified veterinarian. It was also revealed that the certification of many veterinarians expired in 2022, but the recertification took place only about two months after the previous certification expired.
Until the end of the audit, the Ministry of Health had not determined the required number of veterinarians in the authorities, nor had the frequency of inspections been determined.
The report also shows that the Veterinary Supervision Corporation transferred budgets to Taybeh, Yavneh, and Yehud-Monosson during periods when there was no veterinarian. Moreover, in June 2022, 173 of the country's authorities did not report a single audit to the Ministry of Health.
Another serious area is the security of veterinarians who are exposed to threats and physical harm. In this case, too, the Ministry of Health did not publish guidelines to protect their safety.
Slaughter process
No regulations and no enforcement
Apart from guidelines regarding the publication of meat destruction, the Veterinary Unit of the Ministry of Health has not published guidelines for the activities of veterinarians in local authorities. The unit also does not supervise the reports provided by veterinarians, does not conduct findings arising from the reports, and does not conduct examinations of the quality of the supervision.
The Public Health Law regulates a track of financial sanctions on sites that violate its provisions, but the Ministry of Health has not established enforcement regulations when the law is violated and has not staffed four standards for establishing such an enforcement system.
In addition, the Ministry of Health published only 21% of the destructions of 50 kg or more carried out from January to September 2022. The ministry also did not publish the killings reported from January 2021 to September 2022.
The Ministry of Health said in response: "
The Ministry of Health is working to improve the veterinary service system, in parallel with in-depth professional processes that include replanning the veterinary unit's activity, defining the boundaries of its sector and work interfaces inside and outside the ministry, since this is an important area for public health.
It is important to note that notwithstanding what is stated in the comptroller's report, there is no connection between the supervision of the veterinary service in the markets and the unfortunate deaths of the three residents of Beit Dafna, which resulted from improper handling of meat in the institution itself and not from the supervision processes in the markets.
Even at the level of supervision in the institution, the responsibility for supervision of daycare centers, as defined by law, is not that of the Ministry of Health, but of the Ministry of Social Affairs."
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